Who said the following: “The vast majority of asylum seekers are free-loaders, blackguards, and hoodlums. They are hunted out of their own placeby their own people. I’d take a genuine asylum seeker and put him under my own roof. But where is he?

As the saying goes, there are no dead certainties in politics. Well, maybe one.

THE decision by Deputy Michael Healy-Rae to pay the cost of the premium-rate phone calls which were made in Leinster House in support of Mr Healy- Rae’s appearance on Celebrities Go Wild, is to be welcomed. However, it should not be an end to the issue.

ONE of the country’s most colourful TDs, Independent Jackie Healy-Rae, is to step down from public life – but his county councillor son Michael has been put forward to contest the next general election in Kerry South.